I don’t know if guns deter crime or not but suspect that they would. The bigger issue is if a serious crime is about to be committed, I want the means to stop it fast and I want to be on the winning side of it. The loss of a criminals life isn’t a loss to society. The loss of my law-abiding life however, is.

Exact numbers for the impact of firearms on crime are difficult to come by. Much of the research into the impact of guns as a crime deterrent comes from the work of Dr. Gary Kleck, a Florida State University criminologist.

Guns in Self-Defense

Kleck released a study in 1993 showing that guns are used in defense of crime 2.5 million times each year, an average of once every 13 seconds. Kleck’s survey concluded that guns are used in defense of crime three-to-four times more often than they’re used in the commission of a crime.

Surveys conducted prior to Kleck’s found gun uses in self-defense to range from 800,000 to 2.5 million each year. A U.S. Department of Justice Survey released in 1994, “Guns in America,” estimated that 1.5 million defensive gun uses each year.

Guns as a Deterrent

Studies by Kleck and the Department of Justice conclude that guns are frequently used to protect crime victims. But do they serve as a deterrent to crime? Findings are mixed.

A study by professors James D. Wright and Peter Rossi surveyed nearly 2,000 incarcerated felons and concluded that criminals are more worried about running into armed victims than law enforcement.

According to the Wright-Rossi survey, 34% of the felons responding from state prisons said that they had been “scared off, shot at, wounded or captured” by a victim armed with a firearm. The same percentage said they worried about being fired upon by armed victims, while 57% said they were more concerned with encountering an armed victim than encountering law enforcement officers.

Avoiding Armed Robberies

America’s liberal gun laws are often criticized as a contributor to the U.S.’s relatively high rates of violent crime. Homicide rates in the U.S. are among the highest in the world, exceeding homicide rates in some nations that have clamped down on civilian gun ownership.

However, Kleck studied crime rates from Great Britain and the Netherlands — two nations with much stricter gun ownership laws than the U.S. — and concluded that the risk of armed robbery is lower in America because of loose gun laws.

The rate of burglaries at occupied homes (“hot” burglaries) in Great Britain and the Netherlands is 45%, compared to a rate of 13% in the U.S. Comparing those rates to the percentage of hot burglaries in which the homeowner is threatened or attacked (30%), Kleck concluded that there would be an additional 450,000 burglaries in the U.S. in which homeowners are threatened or attacked if the rate of hot burglaries in the U.S. was similar to the rate in Great Britain. The lower rate in the U.S. is attributed to widespread gun ownership.

I worked in IT at a law enforcement agency for several years. The property and evidence section, aside from smelling strongly of cannabis, was an interesting place to visit. Firearms were stored in a separate, fairly small, locked room in the warehouse along with money and other valuables. The assault weapons — shovels, rakes, 2x4s, sledge hammers, etc. — were kept in a number of large barrels since they did not fit well on shelves or in boxes. It was obvious that any object that can be swung or thrown is a weapon.

As mentioned in another post crimes that are prevented are not reported. UCR only accounts for cases were a report is filed and only for certain types of offense. I do not think statistics are even kept for attempted crime, let alone prevented crime.